Participation in Community Development Employment Projects is asked as a separate question only on the Interviewer household forms. Community Development Employment Projects participation is not applicable to people enumerated on mainstream forms. More Detailed Description

There are many aspects which can affect the quality of Census data; the following information should be considered when viewing data on Community Development Employment Projects Participation (CDEP).

Care should be exercised when using Community Development Employment Projects Participation as its limited collection in the 2006 Census (as outlined in the paragraphs below) means it cannot be used as a count of persons who are participating in the CDEP program. It does however, provide information on the characteristics of those persons for whom it was collected.

This data is only applicable to those persons who were enumerated on Interviewer Household Forms (IHF) and who answered "Yes" to the question on whether they had a job last week (Question 41 in the IHF). IHFs were primarily used in remote communities across Australia. The proportion of Indigenous persons enumerated on IHFs in the states and territories where IHFs were used are: New South Wales (2.9%), Queensland (16.6%), Western Australia (19.6%), South Australia (11.7%), the Northern Territory (66.0%) and Other Territories (71.8%). Some non-Indigenous persons were also enumerated on an IHF and a number of these were recorded as being a "Participant worker in CDEP", making up 2.1% of persons in this category.

In addition, as Question 41 refers to a person's "main job", jobs for which CDEP is only a component may not be reported as CDEP jobs.

The question on participation in CDEP is new for 2006, although it was collected as a category of GNGP (Industry Sector) for the 2001 Census. The data for the two Censuses is not comparable as 2001 data also included persons enumerated on forms other than the Special Indigenous Form (similar to the IHF), who reported "CDEP" in their written responses to the work questions. For 2001, the total number of persons in the CDEP category of GNGP was 19,769 and the number of these that were enumerated on SIFs was 15,026. For 2006, the number of persons in the CDEP category "Participant worker in CDEP" was 14,497.

Note also that although the SIF in 2001 and the IHF in 2006 were used broadly in remote areas, there was some variation between the Censuses.

CDEP is derived from check box responses to Question 41 in the IHF and the risk of processing error is minimal.

Because of the way it is derived, there is no non-response for CDEP. However 7.9% of persons enumerated on IHFs and for whom the question on whether they had a job last week was applicable did not answer that question.

The ABS aims to produce high quality data from the Census. To achieve this, extensive effort is put into Census form design, collection procedures, and processing procedures.

There are four principal sources of error in Census data: respondent error, processing error, partial response and undercount. Quality management of the Census program aims to reduce error as much as possible, and to provide a measure of the remaining error to data users, to allow them to use the data in an informed way.

When completing their Census form, some people do not answer all the questions which apply to them. In these instances, a 'not stated' code is allocated during processing, with the exception of non-response to age, sex, marital status and place of usual residence. These variables are needed for population estimates, so they are imputed using other information on the Census form, as well as information from the previous Census.

The processing of information from Census forms is now mostly automated, using scanning, Intelligent Character Recognition and other automatic processes. Quality assurance procedures are used during Census processing to ensure processing errors are kept at an acceptable level. Sample checking is undertaken during coding operations, and corrections are made where necessary.

The Census form may be completed by one household member on behalf of others. Incorrect answers can be introduced to the Census form if the respondent does not understand the question or does not know the correct information about other household members. Many of these errors remain in the final data.

More detailed information on data quality is available in the 2006 Census Dictionary (cat. no. 2901.0), in the section titled Managing Census Quality. Back to top

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